Avian Flu vs Bicyclist-Ticketing Cops

I know you’re all shocked.

My loyal readership, probably dwindled down to a desperate few, wondering if Farmer Tracy would ever again throw out a morsel.

Actually, at this point, I’m probably writing into the abyss. Tossing my scattered paranoia driven thoughts onto one of a bazillion blogs out there in the fertile field of the internet. Like a tiny seedling in a 10,000 acre cornfield my writings are, only to be savored by a precious few. With butter and salt. Or grilled. Grilled corn is really good, especially marinated in curry sauce. I have a good recipe if anyone wants.

Making Hay

Yeah, yeah, I never update this blog. I could give you all the same old excuses, or make hay to use the subject line of this posting. Suffice it to say that I've come up with many grand ideas of all the things I would get done and all the soul searching and expanding of horizions I would do while on the farm. Ideas that have been sown like seeds and have sprouted into cute little seedlings with so much potential to be plants and provide vegetables and fruits for people. But like the little seedlings, some ideas don't always germinate, some ideas make it into seedlings but never get transplanted, some get transplanted and die out in the field, and only a precious few of these seeds actually become the food we eat. Or the ideas we, uhm, put into action.

timing & compost -- critical components of farming

The other day Dave (the farmer I apprentice for) told me these sage words: Farming is all about timing. Which is funny, because I had been thinking those very words for the past month. Timing on many different scales. Timing on a daily level is important for watering, for closing and opening greenhouses, for working in greenhouses. Timing on a weekly scale is important for harvesting, weeding, pruning and tying tomatoes, and for transplanting, but transplanting and harvesting are also dependent on timing on the seasonal level, as is planting cover crops and prepping fields.

As you may have noticed...

...this blog is not being updated as frequently as I might’ve liked. But now that I’m a farmer (or, more accurately, a farm apprentice – people I know who’ve farmed for years still don’t call themselves farmers. I think it’s kind of like being a Jedi Master, in that it’s a goal that as you approach it, the more modest and humble you become. Or are Jedi Masters even humble? Maybe they’re just subtle.) anyways, now that I’m working on a farm, I’ve thrown off the shackles of technology and am embracing the liberation of low-tech life.

Farmistic Impressions

Okay, so, now I know what a tractor does.

It does a lot of things. But I guess in the general sense, what it does is pull really heavy stuff over beds that you want to eventually plant things in. Like plows. And rototillers. And buckets filled with compost. And rolls of remay(sp) which is used to cover beds so that pests don't get to it (I think). And transplanters (these rigs that have two seats and these pieces of metal that trace rows in the beds so you know where to plant.)

Anyways, life on the farm is quite the change from living in the big city. Here are a couple of changes: